Page 56 (part 7)

As the Tyndaridae, the twin brothers are an astronomical symbol, and stand for Day and Night ; their two wives, Phoebe and Hilasira, the daughters of Apollo or the Sun, personifying the Dawn and the Twilight.** Again, in the allegory where Zeus is shown as the father of the two heroes -- born from the egg to which Leda gives birth -- the myth is entirely theogonical. It relates to that group of cosmic allegories in which the world is described as born from an egg. For Leda assumes in it the shape of a white swan when uniting herself to the Divine Swan.*** Leda is the mythical bird, then, to which, in the traditions of various peoples of the Aryan race, are attributed various ornithological forms of birds which all lay golden eggs.**** In the Kalevala (the Epic Poem of Finland), the beauteous daughter of the Ether, "the Water Mother," creates the world in conjunction with a "Duck" (another form of the Swan or Goose, Kalahansa), who lays six golden eggs, and the seventh, "an egg of iron," in her lap. But the variant of the Leda allegory which has a direct reference to mystic man is found in Pindar***** only, with a slighter reference to it in the Homeric hymns.****** Castor and Pollux are in it no longer the Dioscuri (of Apollodorus III . 10, 7); but become the highly significant symbol of the dual man, the Mortal and the Immortal. Not only this, but as will now be seen, they are also the symbol of the Third Race, and its transformation from the animal man into a god-man with only an animal body. Pindar shows Leda uniting herself in the same night to her husband and also to the father of the gods -- Zeus. Thus Castor is the son of the Mortal, Pollux the progeny of the Immortal. In the allegory made up for the occasion, it is said that in a riot of vengeance against the Apherides******* Pollux kills Lynceus -- "of all mortals he whose sight is the most penetrating" -- but Castor is wounded by Idas, "he who sees and knows." Zeus puts an end to the fight by hurling his thunderbolt and killing the last two combatants. Pollux finds his brother dying.******** In [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * " Odyssey ," xi. 298 to 305; " Iliad, " iii., 243. ** Chants Cypriaques, Hyg. Tal., 80. Ovid, " Fasti, " etc. See Decharme ' s " Mythologie de la Grece Antique. " *** See Brahma Kalahamsa in Book I. Stanza III., p. 78. **** See Decharme ' s " Mythologie, " etc., p. 652. ***** Nem., x., 80 et seq. Theocras, xxiv., 131. ****** xxxiv., v. 5 ; Theocritus, xxii ., 1. ******* Apollodorus, III. ii., 1. ******** Castor's tomb was shown in Sparta, in days of old, says Pausanias (III., 13, 1); and Plutarch says that he was called at Argos the demi-mortal or demi-hero [[ mizarchagetas ]]. (See Plutarch, Quaestiones Graecae, 23 . ) [[Vol. 2, Page]] 123 THE ALLEGORY OF CASTOR AND POLLUX. his despair he calls upon Zeus to slay him also. "Thou canst not die altogether," answers the master of the Gods; "thou art of a divine race." But he gives him the choice: Pollux will either remain immortal, living eternally in Olympus; or, if he would share his brother's fate in all things, he must pass half his existence underground, and the other half in the golden heavenly abodes. This semi-immortality, which is also to be shared by Castor, is accepted by Pollux.* And thus the twin brothers live alternately, one during the day, and the other during the night.** Is this a poetical fiction only? An allegory, one of those "solar myth" interpretations, higher than which no modern Orientalist seems able to soar? Indeed, it is much more. Here we have an allusion to the "Egg-born," Third Race; the first half of which is mortal, i.e. , unconscious in its personality, and having nothing within itself to survive***; and the latter half of which becomes immortal in its individuality, by reason of its fifth principle being called to life by the informing gods, and thus connecting the Monad with this Earth. This is Pollux; while Castor represents the personal, mortal man, an animal of not even a superior kind, when unlinked from the divine individuality. "Twins" truly; yet divorced by death forever, unless Pollux, moved by the voice of twinship, bestows on his less favoured mortal brother a share of his own divine nature, thus associating him with his own immortality. Such is the occult meaning of the metaphysical aspect of the allegory. The widely spread modern interpretation of it -- so celebrated in antiquity, Plutarch tells us,**** as symbolical of brotherly devotion -- namely, that it was an image borrowed from the spectacle of Nature -- is weak and inadequate to explain the secret meaning. Besides the fact that the Moon, with the Greeks, was feminine in exoteric mythology, and could therefore hardly be regarded as Castor -- and at the same time be identified with Diana -- ancient symbologists who held the Sun, the King of all sidereal orbs, as the visible image of the highest deity, would not have personified it by Pollux, a demi-god only.***** [[Footnote(s)]] ------------------------------------------------- * Pindar. Nem. x., 60, Dissen. ** Schol. Eurip. " Orestes, " 463, Dindorf. See Decharme ' s " Mythol., " etc., p. 654. *** The Monad is impersonal and a god per se, albeit unconscious on this plane. For, divorced from its third (often called fifth) principle, Manas, which is the horizontal line of the first manifested triangle or trinity, it can have no consciousness or perception of things on this earthly plane. "The highest sees through the eye of the lowest" in the manifested world; Purusha (Spirit) remains blind without the help of Prakrit (matter) in the material spheres; and so does Atma-Buddhi without Manas. **** " Morals, " p. 484 f. ***** This strange idea and interpretation are accepted by Decharme in his " Mythologie de la Grece Antique. " "Castor and Pollux," he says, "are nothing but the Sun and [[Vol. 2, Page]] 124 THE SECRET DOCTRINE.